The Daily Business News on MHProNews will take step back in time to January 19, 2019, when Andrea Riquier with MarketWatch reported on a noteworthy trend. This will tee up the first of a periodic series of reports on what Harvard’s Eric Belsky called the ‘life blood’ of housing, financing. On a day when the markets generally rose, as the stocks tracked here from MHVille were mixed, we’ll look at Riquier’s data to see what insights it offers for manufactured housing industry professionals, watchers, and investors.

If you’re new, already hooked on our new spotlight feature – or are ready to get the MH professional fever – our headline report is found further below, after the newsmaker bullets and major indexes closing tickers.

Part of this unique evening feature provides headlines – from both sides of the left-right media divide – which saves busy readers time, while underscoring topics that may be moving investors, which in turn move the markets.

Readers say this is also a useful quick-review tool that saves researchers time in getting a handle of the manufactured housing industry, through the lens of publicly-traded stocks connected with the manufactured home industry.

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Today’s markets and stocks, at the closing bell…

Today’s Big Movers

Forall the scores and highlightson tracked manufactured home connected stocks today, see the Bloomberggraphic, posted below.

Today’s MH Market Spotlight Report –

“Visiting a bank to get a mortgage? You’re in the minority,” wrote Andrea Riquier. “With earnings from three of the four biggest banks in, one metric stands in sharp relief. Mortgage lending just keeps plunging.”

Here are some key pull quotes.

In the fourth quarter, mortgage originations at Citi were down 23% compared to a year ago. At Wells Fargo WFC, they were 28% lower, and at JPMorgan Chase JPM, they were down 30%.

What’s going on? Here’s how JPMorgan CFO Marianne Lake described it in her prepared remarks to analysts Wednesday: “Home Lending revenue was down 8%, driven by lower net production revenue in a low volume highly competitive environment.”

In other words, fewer people want to take out mortgages from us, and those who do aren’t as profitable for us.

This is relevant to manufactured housing on numerous levels. Let’s note first that Wells Fargo, which Berkshire Hathaway has a serious stake in, has routinely been among the top 3 lenders on manufactured homes for some time.

First, it is outrageous that during an affordable housing crisis, that manufactured homes have been in a 6-month downturn. That’s an indictment on the industry’s big boy leaders, no matter how you want to spin it. When some 80 percent of the production is produced by three firms covered in our report below, that’s a financial finger wagging in their faces.

While MHProNews has a report out of Michigan that suggests that the downturn might mitigate in the March shipment numbers, even if there is a rise, that will still be tepid compared to shipment levels from 20 years ago.

Part of the issue that the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) and others point to is related to financing of manufactured homes. See a recent MHARR report, linked here.

Back to what MarketWatch said then…

Banks spent the early years of the post-financial crisis recovery fleeing the mortgage market. But more recently, it’s felt a little like the mortgage market is fleeing from banks. Mortgage lending is down, mostly because there aren’t enough houses for people to buy to sustain a healthy housing market – although rising rates aren’t helping either. Also thanks to those higher rates, the long refinance boom is over.

Among those people who do find houses to buy or a reason to take out a different mortgage, more are using “non-banks” like Quicken Loans and LoanDepot than old-fashioned deposit-taking institutions. As of the end of last year, 59% of all mortgages were made by non-banks, according to Urban Institute data.

MHProNews’ publisher L. A. ‘Tony’ Kovach wrote a column called “The High Cost of Low Volume Sales.” The Texas Manufactured Housing Association (TMHA) were among those that reproduced that article. A flashback on that is linked here.

Here at MHProNews, we follow the money trail, the fact, evidence, and logic and ask the questions that no one else in our industry’s trade media are writing about. Perhaps that’s why sources indicate our readership is greater than the next 3 trade publishers combined. Bold claim? Perhaps, but it happens to have evidence to back it up.

A photo of another rack at Tunica appears almost untouched. The industry’s pros, given a choice between fluff and reality, routinely chose the real deal.

It is self evident to those who look at history and the facts that the industry is under-performing. Several MHI member companies have said as much, in their own IR presentations. Rollohome went from zero to 60,000 new homes shipped in 2 years. What was done before can be done again, better, faster, and with sustainable results, thanks to existing laws.

The industry’s investors ought to be demanding answers from the Big 3, and their ‘big boy’ association, the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI).

Why? To begin to answer that, consider the 4 linked articles, below. For investors that are looking for answers, you’ve arguably come to the right place.

” Mobile homes were perfected by humans, but invented by snails,” John Oliver on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, per Time. ” The homes of some the poorest people in America are being snapped up by some of the richest people in America.” Really?

America woke up today to division. But perhaps 75 percent (+/-) of the nation’s people could come together on a plan that demonstrably could do the following. Increase the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by some $2 Trillion Annually, without new federal spending.

Bloomberg Closing Ticker for MHProNews…

NOTE: The chart below includes the Canadian stock, ECN, which purchased Triad Financial Services.

NOTE: The chart below covers a number of stocks NOT reflected in the Yahoo MHCV, shown above.